Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou: A Curriculum Resource Unit

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center and Regents of the University of California are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to African Arts. All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions out, " 'fantastic' is a word with as much potential to mislead as it has to direct us to a new understanding of the Faletti Collection in particular and African art more generally" (p. 17). But like seasoned members of a bomb squad, they carefully defuse the term and expose its intriguing roots. Appropriately enough, "fantastic" comes from the Greek phantastikos, "able to create mental images," itself derived from phantos, "visible."The particular sense of the fantastic that is developed and modified by the Robertses is a version used by the literary critic Tzvetan Todorov. For Todorov the fantastic is the "hesitation" experienced when one is caught "between a natural and supernatural explanation of events" (p. 18). The Robertses logically equate this to what Victor Turner called the "liminal" period, the time or space between one reality and another-the very time that much of African art is intended to herald. Seen in this way, "fantastic" does seem a fitting description for a dark Ijo water-spirit mask ( fig. 8) with tubular eyes and multiple smaller faces projecting from the headcrest, which was once worn to bring forth the normally unseen world beneath the water. Yet, however theoretically appropriate the concept "fantastic" may be, the term seems too susceptible to misuse. As the authors' own example of other, more common use attests ("What fantastic avocado dip!"), the term may be forever tainted with the irreverence of a 1970s cocktail party (p. 17). The next section, "The Sublime in African Art," comprises four separate essays. The sublime is felt when experiencing fear from a safe distance, as with its more common reference to natural phenomena such as cliffs and waterfalls. While the fantastic aspect of African art is intended to produce astonishment and awe, it is the sublime that can "move one beyond such a frightful breach, then, to a 'safe place' of numinous significance" (p. 34). By localizing and containing the fantastic, African art allows the viewer to experience the sublime. By continually referencing corresponding African notions such as the Kongo ngitukulu ("astonishment") and the Mende kabande ("magic, mystery, marvel, wonder"), the Robertses effectively argue the relevancy of "sublime" as a useful conceptual tool to describe the affective potential of African art (pp. 34-35).The last half of the book is devoted to illustrating and describing 90 pieces from the Faletti Family Collection in 76 catalogue entries. While the selection is heavily...